The life and work of St. Paul

72 THE LIFE AND WORK OF ST. PAUL.
Now this Hellenism expressed many shades of difference, and therefore tha
exact meaning of the word Hellenist varies with the circumstances under which
it is used. The accident of language might make a man, technically speaking,
a Hellenist, when politically and theologically he was a Hebrew and this
;
must have been the condition of those Hellenists who disputed against the
arguments of St. Paul in his first visit to Jerusalem. 1 On the other hand, the
name might imply that alienation from the system of Judaism, which in some
Jews extended into positive apostasy, and into so deep a shame of their
Jewish origin, as to induce them, not only in the days of Jason and Menelaus, 8
but even under the Herods, to embrace the practices of the Greeks, and even
to obliterate the external sign of their nationality. 3 Others again, like the
astute Herodian princes, were hypocrites, who played fast and loose with
their religion, content to be scrupulous Jews at Jerusalem, while they could
be shameless heathen at Berytus or Czesarea. But the vast majority of
Hellenists lay between these extremes. Contact with the world had widened
their intelligence and enabled them so far to raise their heads out of the heavy
fog of Jewish scholasticism as to distinguish between that which was of
eternal and that which was but of transient significance. Far away from
Jerusalem, where alone it was possible to observe the Levitical law, it was a
natural result that they came to regard outward symbols as merely valuable
for the sake of inward truths. To this class belonged the wisest members of
the Jewish Dispersion. It is to them that we owe the Septuagint translation,
the writings of Philo and Josephus, and a large cycle of historical, poetic, and
apocryphal literature. Egypt was the main centre of this Graeco-Jewish
activity, and many of the Jews of Alexandria distinguished themselves in the
art, the learning, and the accomplishments of the Greeks. 4
It is hardly to be
wondered at that these more intellectual Jews were not content with an
iufructuose Babbinism. It is not astonishing that they desired to represent
the facts of their history, and the institutions of their religion, in such an
aspect as should least waken the contempt of the nations among whom they
lived. 5 But although this might be done with perfect honesty, it tended, no
doubt, in some to the adoption of unauthorised additions to their history, and
unauthorised explanations of their Scriptures in one word, to that style of
Acts ix. 29.
2 See 2 Mace. iv. 13, seqq., " Now such was the height of Greek fashions, and increase
of heathenish manners, through the exceeding profoneness of Jason, that ungodly wretch,
and no high priest, . . . that the priests, . . . despising the . . . temple, hastened to
be partakers of the unlawful allowance in the place of exercise, after the game of Discus
called them forth," &c. rwann ]V mobo, "the abominable kingdom of Javan," is an ex-
pression which stereotypes the hatred for Greek fashions.
3
rii.6 (1 Cor. vii. 18). The condition of a TjiteQ (1 Mace. L 15 ; Jos. Anlt. xii.
5, 1). (On Judaic Hellenism, see Ewald, Gesch. v. ii. 4.)
4
Thus, an Ezekiel wrote a tragedy on Moses ; another, Philo, wrote an Epic on
Jerusalem ; Theodotus, a tragedy on the Rape of Dina ; Demetrius and Eupolemos wrote
secular history. The story of Susanna is a novelette. But the feeling of stricter Jews
was sternly opposed to these forms of literary activity. In the letter of Aristeas we are
told that Theopompus was struck with madness, and Theodektes with blindness, for
offences in this direction (Hausrath, Newt. Zeitg. ii. 180).
* Such was the main object'of Josephus in his Antiquities.